Tonight my son Lex and I went to screening and talkback on campus at USC. The guest was David Simon, executive producer and creator of “The Wire,” which we are sad is ending its five-season run next Sunday.

As LA Times television critic Howard Rosenberg noted in his introduction, “The Wire” is far too complicated to synopsize easily, but if you haven’t watched the show, let’s just say it’s about the long-ranging and wide-reaching implications of the war on drugs and all the institutions it touches. It is not a show that an optimist could embrace.

Admidst talk of the show’s themes, Simon recounted the latest statistics on our country’s prison industrial complex: 1 in 100 people in this country are in prison, 1 in 9 black men in this country are in prison, 1 in 4 black men are in some way under the aegis of the enforcement or corrections. We are the most imprisoned people in history.

It’s the war on drugs that has gotten us here.

“No politician in our lifetime will touch this,” he said, “Not Obama, not Clinton, not McCain. The only thing that will end it is massive civil disobedience.”

His plan is this: That if he ever winds up on a jury in a drug case where no one was harmed, he plans to vote not guilty. If asked, he’ll admit during voir dire that victimless drug crims shouldn’t be prosecuted. If everyone did this, he said, and the system couldn’t empanel a jury for possession cases, then the system would have to adapt.

That’s his proposal to end the war on drugs: not to play the game.

He says his fellow writer-producers on “The Wire” have already signed on, and tonight he was spreading the word to the 300 or so of us.

Now I’ve posted it here.

Thoughts?

While I’m not generally keen to shovel dirt on someone’s encomium to a dead friend, Brendan Greeley’s remembrance of William F. Buckley Jr. in today’s LA Times Opinion area doesn’t sit well with me.

(First things first: Because Opinion no longer has its own section — it’s the flipside of Book Review — it is now more properly called an area. Most weeks, the area is squirreled away inside a wraparound from Jennifer’s Leather.)

To Greeley, these are the charming traits evinced by the old nob:

1. He had money and wasn’t defensive about it. “To admit that wealth exists requires a kind of innocence, a sincere wonder that anyone might be offended by it.”

2. He “played poker with 19th century Spanish doubloons.”

3. “He had most likely never in his life picked up his own towel.”

There’s more along those lines, but the operant disquisition is into the source of Buckley Jr.’s wealth. His father was a lawyer and oil baron who made his money south of the border in Venezuela, where he struck it rich with Standard Oil, and in Mexico, where before he was kicked out of the country he worked to get the Mexican constitution changed so that he more widely speculate in oil and land. It doesn’t sound as though there was a lot of personal towel-retrieving there, either, but Buckley pere earned his fortune.

In some corners, there is still a notion that the better off should do something to assist the worse off, those without pricey Bordeaux and 36-foot sloops, those who can’t use 19th century coins as poker chips. There’s a sense that the world has helped make them better off, and perhaps they should do something to make the world better off. You see this expressed in the recent actions of Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett, who are placing billions of dollars behind curing diseases and providing people access to clean drinking water. What Buckley Jr. gave us is dozens of books dedicated to the idea that democracy is too freely given and that the rights of the patrician few outweigh the needs of even the most destitute and hopeless. He also gave us Ronald Reagan and, unbelievably, Senator Joe Lieberman. (Buckley actively campaigned against liberal Republican Lowell Weicker, endorsing and campaigning for Lieberman, who won in a close election decided in conservative areas of the state.) Don’t like the federal government you’ve got right now? It started with William F. Buckley Jr.

But his friend seems blind to all this, in the way of surviving friends. He lauds Buckley’s “luck in the world,” luck which comes of a massive inheritance and a scrabbling greed that never cares about others, and he praises Buckley’s profound interest in every single person he ever met. Didn’t he ever meet anyone who couldn’t afford a cup of coffee, and if he did and was profoundly interested, did he do anything about it?

I’ve written plenty of plays, but at least so far I’ve never written a novel. Tonight may have helped me understand why. Novelists work in solitude. Playwrights work with actors and directors. To me, that feels better.

I know a number of novelists, and I have enormous respect for what they do. But it doesn’t relate all that closely to what I do.

What I do is write a play, or agree to direct a play, and then get together with some actors, and proceed from there.

That process is collaborative. Obviously. It’s also generative. Other people bring other things — like ideas, and excitement. And, sometimes, bad ideas, and baggage. But when you’ve got a group of people you trust, talented people you have developed a relationship with and who have developed relationships with each other, that provides a foundation. Novelists tell me they start all over again every time. Theatre people start with the foundation of other people.

So tonight we had readings of two plays in progress from my private workshop. The plays, by Ross Tedford Kendall and Stephanie Walker, were strong and funny and felt lived (as opposed to written). Admittedly I may be biased, but I think these plays should be produced. Ross has put his play through several complete redrafts — and I commended him for both his patience and his tenacity — and has now arrived at what I’ll call a point of departure. It should depart from the development process and into the production process. Stephanie’s play features beautiful writing and subtle character work. Both readings benefited from the interplay you find in a place where people with similar ethics are committed to achieving the same goal. Not all of these actors may have worked together before, but there were so many interwoven relationships in this theatre tonight that it really felt like a family celebration.

All of us grew up with a family, whether that family was large, or just one person. I’m not so naive as to think that family is always a good thing; there are bad families. But when we think of what we want from a family, I certainly felt that tonight at the theatre I work in and from the people I work with, and that is something I doubt a novelist ever gets.

Watch this trailer and tell me it doesn’t have everything one might want all wrapped up in one movie.

I never anticipated saying this, but here goes: I actually feel sorry for Hillary Clinton.

No, I didn’t vote for her. (And now probably will never get the chance.) And no, I’m not going to send her any money. And yes, she’s been wrong about almost everything, including health care back in the 1990’s, and Iraq and Iran and Pakistan since then. But watching last night’s debate has me thinking that she’s right about one thing: the media have been unfair to her. Or, at least, harsher to her than they have been to Obama.

I understand why this has happened. Hillary has been so entwined in our national consciousness for so long that it’s hard to look at her afresh. And why would we? She has run as the candidate of experience, so yes, let’s look at that experience: being consistently wrong, and now being saddled with replaying the battles of last decade, before September 11, 2001 and before the predations of the Bush Administration. It’s all so old, but so detailed, that a lazy but avaricious press can’t help itself.

Then there’s Obama. Fresh. Exciting. Multi-culti. Thoughtful. Cool under pressure. Hillary is practically leaking anxiety all over Tim Russert, but Obama calmly assesses each ball and decides whether or not to swing and where to hit it. He has so much poise that he’s even willing to concede a point — the one about Farrakhan — to his opponent. When was the last time I saw a presidential candidate concede a point in a debate? Um… never. So now we have a contrast not only with Hillary Clinton, who will forever argue the validity of her vote for the Iraq War (as though her having been duped is an argument in her favor), but also with George W. Bush, who believes that God tells him what to do and that he’s therefore never made a mistake. This leaves us to consider as president someone who efficiently recognizes error and moves on. That is a radical transformation, and just the latest instance of the Obama rebranding of the position.

The way Hillary looked at Obama in off moments brought to mind the adage, “If looks could kill….” All along she has thought that this job was hers, but first she had to get these pesky primaries out of the way. I take great personal delight in voters having upended her conclusion. As I’ve noted here before, hubris is a failing that fails the perpetrator first and foremost.

I don’t feel good about Clinton’s treatment in the press recently. But at the same time, I don’t care. The press writes only part of your narrative; the rest is up to you.

I’m halfway through the process of hiring six stage directors for three different plays (which means: I still need three directors). So yesterday I’m speaking to one on the phone who I think would be good for this particular play. But after listening to her schedule, I say, “Hm. It really doesn’t sound like this is going to work.” Bear in mind, she’s just told me that she’s directing another play, one that requires her to be on-site every night, and she’s got a family commitment for all of tech weekend. She shoots back, “But I don’t even know about your project.” So then I explain about the project — being friendly, but utterly wasting time for both of us because it’s transparent that she can’t do my project — and as soon as I’m done, she says words to the effect of, “Oh, I’m sorry, I have these other commitments that I just can’t change, so I’m afraid I’ll have to say no.”

In other words, she couldn’t bear to be rejected, so she turned it around so she was rejecting me.

Pretty pathetic.

I didn’t reject her because of her personality, I rejected her because of her schedule. In fact, I wasn’t truly rejecting her, I was just noting that it wouldn’t work with her schedule. But given this window into working with her, we needn’t worry about that happening again.

Stephen Dunn, my undergrad writing teacher, told me, “Suspense is cheap.” I knew what he meant — that providing insight into human lives and poking at the fabric of existence is a higher literary calling, and is what separates Tolstoy from Louis L’Amour. But I also thought it was an easy thing for a poet to say. Suspense isn’t a weapon that is kept in the poetical armory.

Dramatists have a greater eye for suspense — and for where storylines are going. For most of my life, I’ve known where most stories are going, so for me suspense has been cheap and insight more highly valued. I had little doubt where “Anna Karenina” was headed, the novel or the eponymous heroine, especially because I’d heard in advance about the final meeting with a train. That never mattered because every page signaled the miracle of creation. I was enrapt by Levin’s struggle to understand himself and his place on his land and in the cosmos, and sick over Anna’s dreadful mistake in following her heart and losing everything else. The suspense, such as it was, didn’t matter.

Last year after he gave a talk, Brad Meltzer handed out copies of some of his books, provided gratis by his publisher in what I thought was a nice gesture. I decided to read “The Millionaires.” Was it entertaining? Plenty; it was the reading equivalent of a cocaine rush. Was it suspenseful? To a degree — although again, I could see where all of it was going (and that, in true Agatha Christie fashion, the secret villain was someone who had already falsified his own death). Has it left any footprints on my thinking? Let’s just say that although I gobbled down all 547 pages of the book, a week later I couldn’t remember one iota of it. Whereas I still can’t drum out of my head Chaucer’s cook with the ulcerating knee who happens to stir up a wonderful blancmange, and I read that once 25 years ago.

Last week when we were watching “The Wire,” I said to my son, “Omar isn’t going to make it out of this season.” Omar is the character we like the best, and I could see his demise coming. On tonight’s episode, Omar was hobbling around the streets of inner-city Baltimore taking out Marlo’s muscle. Once I noticed that there were two such scenes, I knew tonight was Omar’s night. (Because the third such scene would complete the movement.) “Tonight’s when he gets it,” I said. Lex said, “NO!” Then Omar stepped into a liquor store to buy a pack of smokes and I said, “This is the scene,” and then he got it in the head from behind. Another smoking-related death.

“WHY ARE YOU ALWAYS RIGHT?!?!?!!?” Lex screamed.

Because suspense is cheap: It’s easily unpacked and solved. Forecasting Omar’s death didn’t ruin the drama because the best drama isn’t about suspense. Suspense is just the vehicle.

Nice piece on Slate.com on the late, great comic-book writer Steve Gerber. But writer Grady Hendrix gets one thing wrong when writing, “[Gerber] delighted in sneaky juvenile wordplay—for part of his run on Man-Thing the book was called Giant Size Man-Thing.”

Yes, great line, and no, Hendrix is not the first to point this out. But Marvel had an entire line of “Giant-Size” something-or-others, including Giant-Size Avengers and Giant-Size Defenders — indeed, there were no fewer than 29 in all (each, you’ll note, with a hyphen between “Giant” and “Size,” which pleases me greatly). So this wasn’t any wordplay on Gerber’s part; this was the result of the regular title selling well enough to merit a quarterly edition as well. But I doubt that would explain the existence of “Giant-Size Kid Colt,” and my algebra skills aren’t up to the task of solving “Giant-Size Marvel Triple Action.”

By the way, the issue above was the one most prized in my collection. I have a letter published inside. I was 14. Ironically I now relate to it even more, but in a completely different way — most nights, I am The Winky Man, wandering around my bedroom creating chaos in my sleep.

If this piece in the New York Times is true and Hillary is this downcast, dejected, and defeated, then I’m gladder than that ever she’s losing the nomination. If she and her hand-picked team can’t tough out a nomination process, what would they do when real trouble strikes? (Assuming, as always, that we actually do get to have an election.) Saying “it’s been an honor” sure doesn’t equate with, say, “We shall never, never, never surrender.”

I just got in from the memorial service for my writing teacher, Bill Idelson, whom I talked about here. The service was held at the Writer’s Guild Theatre, and let me say that even in death Bill continues to be a great teacher. Here’s advice we all should heed in thinking about the service we would want:

1. Get Carl Reiner to emcee. (You may recall that Bill wrote for “The Dick van Dyke Show” and played a recurring role. Hence the connection to Carl Reiner.) Mr. Reiner is warm, humane, slyly funny and wonderfully off-the-cuff. He didn’t miss one opportunity. Perhaps my favorite bit was the suggestion of specific edits after viewing the tribute film.
2. In every photo of you, make it look like you were having the time of your life. Apparently, every day was the time of Bill’s life.
3. Pose an attractive spouse with you in those photos, and enjoy her company in every shot.
4. Surround yourself with interesting and amusing people like Norman Corwin and Ray Bradbury and various successful former students and performers like Ann Guilbert who will show up and tell funny stories about you.
5. Turn out to have been a World War II flying ace, someone determined to fight even though the Navy has given you a p.r. job so you can keep working as an actor. Pay for private flying lessons yourself so they can’t deny you. Then fly night fighter missions over Japan and get awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and four Air Medals. Then don’t tell people, so that even longtime friends learn this only from reading your obit.
6. If you’re going to have children, do a good job with them so that they say things like “I won the Dad lottery,” a claim that will be supported by all the photos and the video.

In summation: great service, impressive life.

It was a pleasure watching clips from “The Andy Griffith Show,” which Bill also wrote for, with a large audience. It’s easy to forget just how wonderful Don Knotts was — as well as the material he had to work with. Much was made of Bill’s writing advice to students over the years. Last night in class I was talking about “verisimilitude” — a word that puzzled my students and that Bill would have winced at — but really I was echoing Bill said: “Keep it real.” (Or, more literally, “make a simulation of the truth.”) One of his other bits of advice repeated tonight was this: Never mortgage your story for a joke. The story is more important, and the joke won’t be that funny. That’s exactly right. If you want more of this, you might click here and order Bill’s book — the core of his workshop, captured on paper.